Sleeping Innocence
by PhantomSilverCrystal
Summary: One-shot [SPD] After spending a few weeks in the year 2025, Sam struggles to get up the courage to talk to his younger self and debates what's for the best


He slept so softly, so sweetly. His bed was too big, but that was okay, and his fingers grasped loosely at the too big blanket that spread across his tiny body. Sam looked down at this boy, aware, if only slightly, that he was doing an impossible thing. He was watching himself sleep.

Floating to his own side, and watching as his own light cast shadows across his smaller self, Sam wondered if he had really once been this small. Had he really once drooled in a bed that seemed to go on for miles past his feet? Had he lived this life of sweet dreams and silent nights?

It was hard to say.

The timeline had been disrupted so many times at his mere presence, and he constantly had to remind himself that it was for the better. His future was a scary place, and this past was bound to make for a better future, wasn't it?

He wanted to watch himself grow. He wanted to stay in this time, to tell himself to be strong, but he couldn't.

Maybe it wasn't that he couldn't. There weren't very many laws about time travel, and those that exsisted weren't official. They couldn't be. The Resistance had only just begun testing, and there was too much risk. He should have waited, he frequently reminded himself. It was just too tempting.

And now he didn't even have a body unless he was morphed.

He couldn't reach out and stroke the childishly long hair of his old self, or comfort the child in his old bed. But if he could... Would he?

Sam had been in the year 2025 for weeks. The fight against Grumm had been getting better and he was satisfied that his being there was of at least some small help.

Seeing Jack, and Sky, and Syd had been wonderful. He had only faint memories of them from the childhood that seemed so long ago, but was  
happening before his eyes again. Talking with Commander Cruger had been strange at first, as he now had the respect of the dog that had once scared him so thoroughly with intimidation. He remembered Bridge and Dr. Manx from the long past days of tinkering in the SPD gadget labs and was glad to see that they were exactly as he had remembered- kind and welcoming.

And of course, Z.

Z was just as beautiful as he had thought her as a child. It was strange to think of her as young, because he was older now. He could remember clearly every moment he had spent with Z as a child, even the one that kept him awake through the sleepless nights of his adolescence- the reason he had joined The Resistance in the first place.

Sam tried not to think of it, but when it was impossible to sleep, he couldn't help it. Even though he knew it wasn't going to happen again, or at least not in the same way, he was tormented by the thoughts as though they were a recurring nightmare he couldn't shake.

Z was supposed to have died, struggling for breath in the street, surrounded by debris from the explosion that had sent the other Rangers flying. The alarms in the Base had flashed bright red lights that haunted Sam's memory as he remembered struggling for breath himself. He had run, as fast as his little body could take him to her side in the street, just as the light was leaving her eyes.

Even now, it was hard for Sam to look too closely at Z, without remembering how her face had looked, bloodied and twisted in pain as her dark eyes had darkened fully and her hand went limp in his.

But that was another history: a history in which SPD had been driven underground and Grumm had claimed Earth for his own. It was a history that had shaped him as a person so fully that looking at the innocence his young self still had, he found it hard to imagine who this child would become.

He wanted to tell himself his own story, but this child could be so much happier than he had ever been. He could grow up, and do wonderful things for SPD just the same, and if things went as well as he hoped, maybe Z wouldn't ever leave his life. She could become the big sister and friend he had wanted so much in his lonely childhood, and he could grow to be loved and loving, instead of the un-trusting, paranoid adult he had tried so hard to not become.

"Mnnn," The sleeping Sam groaned and rolled away from the light.

"Sorry," He whispered in return, marveling at the wonder of his sound sleep. He certainly couldn't remember sleeping this well after Z's death. Preventing that had without a doubt changed everything, and he decided that he couldn't take away a chance at happiness for the child that slept before him now. This child wasn't a Sam that the Omega Ranger would ever be.

And maybe that was for the best.

Silently, he floated from his old room and decided to find a way to make himself useful, and far from himself. It was all for the person he could have been, after all.

* * *

**A.N.**:** I just really want****ed to know why little Sam and Omega Ranger Sam never spoke, so I wrote this to explain it to myself. I'd like to believe that Sam wanted to speak to himself, but for various reasons couldn't. Basically that's it.  
**


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